Ken: I thought it might be terror attack

As Ken Livingstone stood in his office and watched the lights suddenly go out in London, he feared the capital had been the target of a terrorist attack.

Within minutes, he was told the cause of the darkness was a massive power cut, and today Mr Livingstone was blaming a lack of investment in the capital's infrastructure for the night of chaos.

Speaking to the Evening Standard from his office in City Hall after the power cut, the Mayor admitted he had feared the worst when the lights went out.

He said: "I was in my office and saw east London go dark, then saw south London go dark. My first thought was that it might be a terrorist attack.

"But the Metropolitan Police commissioner's office confirmed it looked like a failure of the national power grid."

Clearly angered, he said it was not surprising that London had followed the United States so quickly with a major electricity failure. "The one thing that Britain and America share is that they won't invest in their infrastructure," he said.

"When an advanced industrial nation has its power fail, it isn't bad luck. It's bad decisionmaking in the past. I suspect this is long-term under-investment."

He said travellers faced an "absolute nightmare" to get home and added the only good news was his investment in the night bus network, which would help to ease the situation for stranded passengers.

Along with thousands of other Londoners, he faced a long walk home after Tube trains came to a halt.

"As my line [the Jubilee line] is most probably one that won't get back up, it's going to be another one of those long walks," he said, referring to how he gets to and from work from his home in Cricklewood during Tube strikes.

He said Tim O'Toole, the American he appointed managing director of London Underground, had launched an investigation into the effect of the power cut.

The Mayor said many traffic lights had failed, causing an oil spill at Elephant and Castle that created extra problems for motorists.

He added that evidence about the state of the Tube's infrastructure had already emerged five weeks after the network had come under his control.

"Some of the equipment we are finding is in other people's transport museums around the world," he said.

"We have just got so much under-investment, it's a disgrace.

"We are finding control rooms with signs on them saying, 'Do not open this door - asbestos'. There has been negligent underinvestment."